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I'm officially one week into my vacation, with about two and a half weeks to go.

Yesterday, I really reached that fully unplugged state. A lot of those little errands and todo items got finished a couple days ago, and the vacation has settled somewhat into routine.

It's amazing how after getting unplugged from the hectic routine your entire pace can change. Instead of slowing down though, things seem to be speeding up. For the first few days, I had that: go go go, high speed work mentality, and applying that to my home routine, a lot got done in those opening days. But now the pace is a lot slower, with no sense of urgency or rush, I can take my time with things, I can afford to let my self get distracted here and there. The days slowly start to slide later into the evening and the late night. You look up at the clock though and woosh half the day is gone before you know it.

The other thing though, is how quickly you get unplugged from people too. Sure there's Twitter and IM and such... but that can be sortof jarring; the people on the other ends of those systems are still plugged in and on the hamster wheel. They're still going a million miles an hour and my biggest concern is contemplating what to make for dinner.

Also on the topic of people. Most people are gone from 8am to 6pm. And when they get home, they're still on that frantic pace and trying “maximize” the 3 or 4 hours they have before they need to go to sleep. They're frantic, and still plugged in.

I heard talk on the political shows this weekend of putting people to work, building roads and bridges etc. infrastructure stuff as a way of stimulating the economy.

While I'm sure there are alot of roads and bridges that need repair. Is this really going to do anything? It's necessary to maintain roads and bridges, but as a stimulus I don't get it. You need new functionality to stimulate an area. And I don't see the the stimulus in repairing and replacing.

Building the Hoover Dam changed water and electricity for a region. Putting a new exit ramp off of iWhatever, what's that going to allow? A new strip mall off the interstate? There's way too many empty store-fronts as it is.

I don't know the answer, but more guys standing around in the middle of orange cones doesn't sound like it's going to do much in the short term to me.

Now, Universal Health Care? That's got possibilities. Take the fear out of losing your health care, getting sick and going bankrupt, and suddenly starting a new business seems alot less risky.

I saw Twilight yesterday. I'll go light on the review, because frankly this movie wasn't designed with me or my demographic in mind so there's little point in taking it apart piece by piece. But here's a snapshot of thoughts:

As teen films go, this is better than alot of stuff that's been released recently. And also for a teen film the acting and characters are better than most. Most of the kids actually behave like kids and that's refreshing to see in a movie of this type.

The biggest problem with the movie is it's complete lack of plot. As you watch the film, you'll think you'll know where it's going several times, but although it points the plot gun, it never really pulls the trigger.

There's some good jumping, high speed superheroey type action in the film. The action isn't in service to anything, but if you enjoy watching people perform superhuman feats, well there's a fair amount of that.

Most of the movie involves watching the two characters above get as close as they can to eachother in breathless halting quivering moments of sensual set-up that like the plot gun above also never gets it's trigger pulled.

The two lead characters "fall in love" which happens for all practical intents and purposes off camera because all their relationship driving conversations, and they are shown having many conversations, happen for the most part in silent montage.

Three quarters of the way through the movie there's a spontaneous bit of jeopardy that for the life of me, I didn't fully understand the reasoning behind, but perhaps the director realized the movie was coming toward the end and she best get on with having a chase and a fight of some sort.

I laughed several times, when I wasn't supposed to, but I laughed. I enjoyed several of the superheroey scenes and the characters were for the most part well rounded and not unpleasant to watch or listen too. The film is very earnest but I wouldn't recommend a theater viewing unless you are a teenage girl (but if you are that, then by all means do race to the theater as this is crafted specifically for you) But those with an interest in Superhero stuff will find this no harder to watch than an episode of Heroes, and well given that, I'd say watch it sometime on DVD or cable when you've got some time to kill. eh.

I watched the new Batman Brave and the Bold Cartoon last night. Didn't care for it. I wasn't completely opposed to the concept of them doing a more kid friendly Batman cartoon. But the show is just bad. If they were going to go the more campy cartoony route, they should have really commited to it. I can't see too many kids getting into this show, as it plays it too straight to be parody and not well enough to be considered a straight forward show.

» This WD HD Media Player which can play video off of attached USB drives looks slick. It would have to be half it's $130 price before I would consider using one probably.

» Remember the Milk is a web based task list program. It's pretty neat, but now that it has a gadget you can embed in the left side menu of gmail... it's a pretty convienent tool. Also I set up RTM to take direct messages via twitter. Doubley useful since I always have twitter open.

» There's going to be some incredible amateur web video hitting desktops soon if this short created with a Canon 5D Mk II is any indication.

» I know I tweeted it, but have I mentioned Change.gov on my blog yet?

» Saw a great OPML file of 110 different design feeds on a Digg article linked to this site I didn't want to import that many feed into my Google Reader, so I downloaded a portable RSS reader GreatNews and imported the file into there. Lots of great design stuff.

Went to the midnight show of James Bond, Quantum of Solace last night. Packed theater. Youngish crowd, which you would expect for a midnight show.

QofS picks up pretty much directly where Casino Royal left off. There is a nice opening Bond style chase/action scene and then you get the full blown Bond Style Title sequence music video.

Daniel Craig IS Bond in this film. It’s a grittier, more realistic take on Bond as if you stripped all the movieness off of Sean Connery’s performance and played it raw. Craig as Bond moves through every scene with determination, precision and a grace while very GQ is not over done. Grace might seem a misplaced word, but when you see the film, you’ll probably get what I mean.

This Bond is licensed to kill, and very efficient at it. Never superflously, but never with any unnecessary delay either. Really good Bond film, if you liked Casino Royale, you’ll like this one too. A real guy flick, Good stuff.

PS Thoughts: M was good, we do get some nice computer display tech in this film. There’s really only the one short Ford commercial this time. They don’t say Bond, James Bond, but they come close again with a “shaken, not…” And Quantum as a modern take on Spectre has a lot of continuing story possibilities. Bring on the next Film!

Star Trek Trailer

The Star Trek trailer debuted before Bond also. It looks really good. It seems James T Kirk and Spock are going to get a little Casino Royale/Batman Begins type treatment. What I’ve seen so far with this trailer and other pictures on the web has me very excited for this film. I can’t help but think that this movie will be Rodenberry’s original vision as seen through the lens of a world gone the way of the Apple Store. Some might think that sounds odd, but I’m very interested to see how they explore that type of future. May 2009 is going to be a long wait for this one.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad